Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Mexican Flair: Colorful diner saddle seats are lined up at the eating counter at Sangria Restaurant in Willow Glen. Sangria has been open for the past four years and serves authentic Mexican food, including the carne asada and fajita dishes shown here.
Mexican designs and colors inspire WG's Sangria eatery
By Jim Aquino
Javier Ponce, owner of Willow Glen's four-year-old Sangria Restaurant, wants his businesses to be different from other Mexican restaurants.
"I like to be different from everybody else because most of the Mexican restaurants have the same thing--the same colors and everything," Ponce says.
The inspiration for Sangria's unique interior design comes from elements of various restaurants that Ponce has visited during his frequent trips to Mexico. One day in Mazatlan, Ponce came across a bar where the ceramic barstools were shaped like saddles. He liked the saddle stools so much that he bought them from their owner and installed them into Sangria's bar when he opened the restaurant in 1998 with his then-business partner Jose Rodriguez.
The saddle stools are Sangria's most eccentric and most talked-about feature. Web searches for information about the restaurant always lead to a photograph of Sangria's bar, where a bald, middle-aged customer who looks like former A&E's Biography host Jack Perkins is straddling his stool and waving his hands around like a giddy kid on a carousel.
"A lot of people really like the stools--the kids and even the adults," says Ponce, who recalls seeing a group of Polish tourists snap pictures of his saddle stools. "This group of people from Poland told me they had only seen something like this in the movies."
The bar serves drinks like the red wine/fruit punch hybrid known as sangria for which Ponce named his restaurant.
"Most Mexican restaurants are named after the owner's grandma or hometown in Mexico," Ponce says. "When I open up a business or restaurant, I like to pick names that people recognize right away and remember."
Ponce says he prefers to think of Sangria as more of a family establishment than a place for drinking. According to him, although customers are fascinated by the stools, many of them tend to spend most of their time at the meal tables.
"We try not to sell a lot of alcohol here. This is a family restaurant," Ponce says.
Sangria's most popular meals include fajitas and combination platters like enchilada and chili relleno. Many of Ponce's recipes come from his hometown of Yahualica, in the Mexican state of Jalisco.
"When I go to Mexico, I love to eat. You go to a small town and the people there love to cook. That's where I got the recipes from--my mom, my grandma and neighbors," Ponce says. "All the recipes are 50 to 100 years old."
Ponce, who works for the San Jose city government, has been in the restaurant business since 1989. He helped start Willow Glen's Taqueria Tlaquepaque and later sold it to co-owner Ubaldo Navarro. Then Ponce opened another restaurant in San Jose before returning to Willow Glen to open Sangria.
Last year, Ponce found time to open a second Sangria, on Curtner Avenue. The second Sangria is smaller and more like a fast food-style restaurant, with an emphasis on burritos, tacos and quesadillas. According to Ponce, that Sangria is doing quite well for a new restaurant, with business particularly strong during lunchtime.
Ponce says one thing that he enjoys about the restaurant business is interacting with the customers.
"You meet a lot of people from different places. I have customers who come from San Francisco. I don't know how they find out about us," Ponce says.
Sangria Restaurant, 721 Willow St. and 699 Curtner Ave. Open Sunday-Thursday 10 a.m.-9 p.m. and Friday-Saturday 10 a.m.-10 p.m. at Willow St. Open Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.-9 p.m. and Sunday 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at Curtner Ave. For more information, call 408.287.9777 for the Willow St. location, and 408.445.7444 for the Curtner Avenue location.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
